1 in 25 Sales Professionals Will Be Shocked to Hear This par day

There are a few sales professionals that really "get" the power behind this priceless insight. Others completely miss the significance or undervalue the power behind it.

Hopefully, you are the one who "gets" it and your competitors are the ones to remain ignorant of this gem of thought.

Those who know this shocking truth close lucrative contracts by regularly conducting meetings with THE decision makers. Those who don't know this regularly conduct meetings with low-level decision-makers.

What's the difference between the two? Mindset. There are those who believe they can and those who believe they cannot. Both are right.

That thought as valuable as gold can be unearthed in the telling of this story.

During coaching call sessions, I make the "mindset" point by sharing this slice of life vignette with clients ...

A while back my favorite FAX machine of all time broke. I wanted another one just like it and went through quite a bit of effort to contact the manufacturer to order another.

After 45 minutes of stumbling around, asking questions, and failing to fulfill my order, the company's customer service representative (there's an oxymoron) said it couldn't be done.

I thanked her for her time and asked for my call to be elevated to her supervisor or manager.

To which her response was, "I'm it. I'm the highest person you're going to get to in this company!"

My response was to thank her again and to get off of the phone. The next stop, Tokyo.

After taking a few minutes to surf the Internet, capturing the contact information of the President of the company, and realizing to he was based several time zones away, in Tokyo, I opted to send a brief email to his attention. The email read:

"After dialing 800-xxx-xxxx and spending 45-minutes with the customer service representative trying to order a fax machine from your company, I was unable to do so. If this were my company I'd want to know about this scenario. Knew you would want to know too."

Within 48 hours of hitting the "send button" two, new FAX machines were sitting in front of the office door. The Regional Director of said company called me personally to advise that all customer service reps were being retrained, and to quickly ask what were the top three areas of mistreatment that I had received-so those areas could be addressed.

What does this have to do with a huge insight that when embraced will absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it, leverage your selling time into exponential increases in sales and income?

Pay close attention.

Your attitude and your beliefs make all the difference in the world. You belong at the top. Your time is valuable. Your concerns are most efficiently and effectively leveraged by the top decision-makers.

Most of the sales professionals who hear this story laughingly say, "I would have told that customer services rep ‘what for'. And would have demanded to talk to her boss."

And shake their heads in disbelief, "No, president is interested in that kind of little issue."

The most successful sales pros, shake add …. "Company Presidents worth their sales are most definitely interested in identifying and finding solutions to problems. In fact those two things make up almost their entire job descriptions!"

Besides that, the successful sales pros continue, "The other meaningful information you're missing is … how much of your valuable selling time is spent with low level decision makers such as the customer service representative. Why on earth would you continue to waste your time with someone who has no interest or ability to resolve the problem? That's a waste of time that you could be selling.

Could anyone have contacted the President with valuable information? Absolutely.

How many people actually do?

Was there a payoff for cutting the call with the representative short and going straight to the top decsion-makers? You bet. The problem was quickly resolved, I got more than I expected, and my time was free to spend elsewhere.

That's the way it is when you meet with THE decision makers. Incredibly fast, over and above what you would have expected, handled quickly.

How much more interested are company Presidents going to be in your products and services; solutions you bring to their other business problems?

Very few sales professionals take advantage of these nuggets of business wisdom because it is not within their realm of possibilities that such a meeting could actually occur. They never recognize the "No" begins in their own minds..

Take care so that your thoughts don't paralyze your actions. Know you belong at the top and be one of the few who successfully sell throughout the executive suites!